Tuesday, 11 June 2013

May IDW comics sales figures: driftin'

Fluttershy seems quite cheerful about her issue's stats

Yes, it's comics sales figures time again! As usual, the stats come from Comichron, and also as usual, they're estimates for sales to North American comic shops only. Because of the launch of the graphic novel — imaginatively entitled My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Vol. 1 — there are three numbers for us to look at this month. Let's start with the monthly comics, though: issue #7 of the main series, the third in a four-part arc, came in at no. 68 and sold:

32,188

This represents a decline of 5.1% over issue #6, which is a slightly gentler fall than last time, and pretty much in line with my expectations. The comic remains IDW's best seller, although not by a huge margin. That's because of the success of another title, though: TNMT Ongoing issue #22 did extremely well this month and came in 78th with 22,759 sales. Moving on to the Fluttershy micro, that secured 103rd spot in May's table and racked up sales of:

22,489

A fall of 3.8% there, which in all honesty is less than I'd expected, given the only fairly positive reviews of this comic compared to those of the Rarity micro. It's a shame that it hasn't quite managed to hold on to a spot in the top 100, although the exact same number would have done so last month. Finally, we should look at the trade paperback. This did really rather well, managing seventh position in May's graphic novels table and shifting a total of:

4,652

That isn't an IDW monthly record for a graphic novel (boo!) since Richard Starks Parker: The Score sold about a thousand more copies last July. It's also only about half the numbers sold by May's top book (Adventure Time Vol. 1: Playing With Fire) but it's still very good indeed for this publisher. I just wish it were a bit easier to find the Pony TP in bookshops over here: I've seen one copy in Waterstones in Birmingham, otherwise it's just comic shops and online.

Going back to the monthly comics, though, I think we've done all right. The month-on-month decline is continuing, but it's slowed appreciably since last time for both the main series and the micros. What, if any, influence the more positive recent "preception" for Equestria Girls has had on this I don't know. Overall, though, I don't have major concerns about this months sales figures, and I would imagine that June's stats will show the current trend continuing.